Ahead of the Crowd

Though I love computers, I have long preferred paper for note taking. As more and more people fiddle with their Blackberries during meetings, I thought I was old-school by writing longhand in my notebook. But respected venture capitalist David Hornik writes I’m in good company.

[R]ecently I hosted a meeting of the advisors to one of my portfolio companies. It was an impressive group of tech veterans. Each of them had been involved in the building of multi-million dollar high tech companies. Yet, what struck me about this summit was how many of these computer gurus carried with him a good, old fashioned notebook… I was surprised to see so much scribbling and so little typing. Since that meeting, I have kept my eyes out for this notebook phenomenon and have been amazed by how many startup CEOs, Venture Capitalists, attorneys, etc. have forsaken the digital world for the analog.

Acknowledging that paper isn’t perfect, the article cites problems of exposure to elements and lack of backup. Yet such problems have never troubled me. In 25 years of carrying notebooks, I’ve never lost or ruined one, while during that same period I’ve been grateful for computer backups dozens of times. You’ve heard of notebook computers bursting into flame, but not my trusty book. I consider paper notebooks stable, durable, and unobtrusive.

Folks in Mr. Hornik’s circle prefer the classic leather-bound Moleskine and the pocket-sized graph paper Rhodia, but my choice is more prosaic: the WilsonJones S300-3R Record Ruled. The Rhodia does bring back memories of my college days in France. I must admit a twinge of Moleskine envy and I’ve considered giving the awesome Livescribe Pulse pen a try. Still I can’t imagine why anyone would risk annoying colleagues by tapping on a phone or computer during a meeting.

I like to think of Information Technology (IT) as a means of improving efficiency. Every now and then, however, things go awry and wind up costing a lot of money. In federal procurement, the canonical example is the 1983 “$600 toilet seat,” which, adjusted for inflation, returns to the news every decade or so. You are about to see history repeat itself.

Let’s drop in on Senate hearings in 1994, to find out what happened to that toilet seat from 1983:

Senator GRASSLEY: The Defense Department wants you to believe that they are making dramatic changes in the way things are purchased, particularly spare parts. I think the most outstanding example is the $600 toilet seat of 1983. And we thought that we had that problem taken care of and, 16 [sic] years later, the $600 toilet seat was costing $1800.

Today InfoWorld reported that federal CIO Vivek Kundra unveiled a new General Services Administration (GSA) initiative called Apps.gov. That initiative is supposed to solve a common problem of federal IT procurement:

Kundra said that the government could save a lot of money by using many of the Web-based and cloud technologies that are already available to consumers. It costs the U.S. Transport Safety Administration (TSA) $600,000 to set up a blog, he said. By contrast, consumers can get a Blogger account free.

“If in our lives, we can go online and provision Webmail within a matter of minutes, why must the government spend billions and billions of dollars on information that may not be sensitive in nature?” he said.

Good question. I sure hope this TSA blog, which DOES run on Blogger, cost taxpayers a lot less than $600,000 to set up. The TSA blog could be a showcase of how government agencies use inexpensive consumer technology to accomplish their mission.

But will any savings materialize? How much, do you think, will the government pay to set up a blog in 2020?

Update: The InfoWorld article quoted above doesn’t quite convey the full context of Mr. Kundra’s remarks. His speech, starting at 4:15 in the video (with the quoted passage at 9:11), is worth watching.

This must-see speech by Carl Malamud at O’Reilly’s Gov 2.0 Summit just scratches the surface of opportunities for sharing with “the people” information locked up at all levels of American government. I agree with his premise that the Internet’s potential for opening up government is vast. Yet contrary to populist rhetoric from our leaders, since 9/11/2001 government has shifted openness into reverse gear. Just try to visit any federal worker at her office or request a document under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and you’ll see what I mean. For data, analogous barriers prevail, albeit more subtle.

Mr. Malamud isn’t just talk: he pioneered the publication of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) data on the Web. Should he make headway in opening up our court records, my hat is off to him. Bravo, Mr. Malamud.